The Innocence of Weapons
by Two Ladies of Quality
Summary: Tony knows who will look after him when the chips are down. Dummy's been hiding secrets.


The call to Assemble went up one evening while Natasha was in Tony's workshop peering suspiciously over his shoulder as he fine tuned her Widow's Bite wrist piece. "That better still work, Stark," she snapped as she reached for her phone.

"Yeah, yeah," Tony said, holding things in multiple fingers and his mouth. "Find out what's going on."

"This is Widow, what's up?" She frowned at the phone. "Hello?"

"Did you break your brand new phone again?" Tony said around the tiny screwdriver in his mouth. "Jarvis! What's the what!" There was no response from the AI. Natasha turned for the workshop door while Tony spat the screwdriver onto the workbench. "Jarvis, respond!" He dropped the Bite next to the screwdriver and headed across the room to where his armor was partially laid out on another workbench, ducking around Dummy, who was twirling in confusion.

Natasha was just reaching for the door controls when three men in black uniforms and hoods poured out of the door to the stairwell outside the workshop with ready rifles. She ducked back as they opened fire at the glass walls. The impact resistant glass cracked but held, and one of the men threw a small round object at the wall.

"Tony, down!"

The explosion wasn't as big as a grenade, but it was enough to shatter the wall and throw her and Tony to the floor. The three men leaped through the opening, aiming at the two Avengers.

Tony scrambled to his feet, reaching for the gauntlet on the worktable.

One of the men shot Natasha in the left leg.

"The next one goes in her head, Mr. Stark."

Natasha clamped down on the hole in her thigh; when she was sure she wouldn't make any unprofessional noises, she looked up.

Two more men stood at the far end of the workshop, where an emergency exit was mostly hidden. One of the pair was not wearing a hood and sneered in the way of all megalomaniacs who thought they were in control.

Tony stared at the man, hand still stretched out for the gauntlet. "How did you get in here?"

"I have my ways, Mr. Stark. Now step back from the gauntlet." Tony glanced at Natasha, around the room, then slowly straightened and dropped his hand.

Natasha looked over the situation. The three who had come through the glass were focused on her but were standing out of easy reach; the one with the leader aimed his rifle at Tony. The leader looked around the fabled workshop of Tony Stark with a greedy grin. He nodded at one of the trio nearest her. "Get her up."

"Leave her alone!" Tony snapped.

The leader tsked. "Don't bother with the chivalry, Mr. Stark. The last thing I intend to do is leave the Black Widow lying there with nothing better to do than think of many ways to kill me."

She didn't fight as one of the goons pulled her to her feet and stuck the barrel of a pistol in her ear. She ignored the twinge in her leg, focusing on wondering where the rest of the Avengers were. She did roll her eyes when Tony stuck out his chin and snapped "You'll never get away with this."

The leader laughed. "I know you're trying to delay me while the other Avengers come to your rescue, but they should be too busy answering the distress signal you and Ms. Romanov sent from Staten Island to respond."

Tony frowned. "What the hell's in Staten Island?"

"You'll have to find out when they get back. In any case, we have a schedule and a goal. I have been hired to acquire the schematics of a joint SHIELD/Stark Industries project that you've neglected to leave any trace of on the Stark Industries servers. After some deliberation, it was determined that it would be easier to persue enquiries with you rather than attempt to breech SHIELD security."

"You thought it would be easier to break Jarvis rather than SHIELD?" Tony sneered.

The leader sneered right back. "No, we thought it would be easier to break you. All we've done to your AI is introduce a logic puzzle that is tying up its discretionary processing power. It should last long enough for you to decide to be reasonable."

Tony looked Natasha's way briefly. She tried to telepathically tell him to keep stalling. "What are you looking for?" he asked.

"Excellent. The Archangel shielding system, if you please."

"Sorry, I don't think I have a project with that name."

The leader sighed. "Marco."

One of the two goons aiming rifles at her came over and punched the bullet wound in her leg. She kept her reaction to a small grunt.

Tony winced, looking at the blood on the goon's knuckles. The goon stepped back and to the side, aiming his rifle at her left hip.

"Ms. Romanov's brains are being reserved for final persuasion," the leader snapped. "But I doubt she'll appreciate being left alive after having had a high powered rifle round rip through her hip joint."

Natasha didn't think Tony's look of horror was faked. Her own ruthlessly smothered dread certainly wasn't. This man's practical viciousness left no doubt he wouldn't hesitate to cripple her.

Tony put up his hands. "OK, OK, let's keep the bloodshed to a minimum. This floor is a bitch to clean. But if you've fucked up Jarvis, I'm going to have hell's own time getting any coherent data on Archangel out of the system."

"Good try, Mr. Stark, but we haven't fucked up the AI, we've only got it chasing its tail." He smiled nastily. "I'm sure someone of your genius can access your files without having his hand held."

"Yeah, yeah, fine." He headed towards one of his terminals.

The ambient speakers crackled. "Sir, intrud-Aveng-alerted," Jarvis' broken voice declared. "Override proto-countermeasures active in-seconds. Help is on the way."

Tony grinned at the ceiling. "Way to go, Jarvis!"

"Indeed, sir. My apologies for the interruption in service."

The leader snarled. "And there's our deadline." He aimed his pistol at Tony. "I'm not leaving here empty handed. Dig up Archangel, Stark, or I'll find something else. There's still a bounty out for that glowbug in your chest."

Natasha saw Tony's hand twitch upwards, but he kept himself from covering the arc reactor protectively. The leader stepped forward, but Dummy, whirring harshly, rolled forward to intercept.

"The hell?" the leader said, turning to aim his pistol at the robot.

"Dummy, no, stop it!" Tony ordered.

Dummy stuck his arm out towards the leader, spinning his fingers at him.

The leader pulled one of the little round grenade things out of his pocket and reached towards the complicated joint behind Dummy's head.

"No, wait!" Tony yelled.

The leader was starting to look rattled. "You get control of this piece of shit right now and give me my data, or I'm putting Romanov down!"

Tony raised his hands placatingly. "OK! OK! I'll lock him down, give me a second!"

Natasha studied him out of the corner of her eye. He was anxious, but he always was when one of his "children" was threatened. It shouldn't take much, the bots would do as they were told, despite all the loud electronic protests they would make. Tony's eyes worried her, though. There was fear, but also creeping dread. And his hands were shaking.  
He took a deep breath. "Jarvis, special orders."

". . . In compliance, sir."

Natasha blinked. Jarvis had hesitated. And sounded sad.

Tony stared at Dummy, who was rocking on his tracks, beeping anxiously as he looked back and forth between Avengers and invaders, his claw spinning. "Dummy, special order."

Dummy went still and turned his camera to Tony.

"Identify and mark all non-Avenger, non-Shield personnel in the room."

The leader smirked. "Tell it to stay out of our way."

Dummy looked at the five invaders, finishing with the leader, who was standing less than a foot in front of him.  
Tony licked his lips. "Du-Dummy, special order. Lima. Lima. Indigo." A tear broke from the corner of his eye. "Kansas."

A thin spike shot out from beside Dummy's camera and buried itself in the leader's skull. He spasmed and dropped.  
Dummy's claw housing split and folded out into four long blades, then began to spin.

The invader holding Natasha stupidly moved his gun from her head to point it at the bot. She broke his elbow for him, then broke his neck.

Tony grabbed his left gauntlet off the workbench behind him, shoved it on his hand, then whirled and shot the goon with the rifle aimed at Natasha, then the invader at the far side of the workshop. He and Natasha both turned at the sound of gurgling and wet ripping.

The last invader's body fell off the blades at the end of Dummy's arm, a gaping hole where his throat used to be. Dummy lifted his head to scan the room, pausing on each fallen invader. He whirred once, then froze, then his camera angled as much as it could to look at the bloody blades with bits of flesh caught in the crevices.

Dummy screamed.

"Jarvis, shut him down!" Tony yelled, hurdling over the bodies on the floor to get to his bot. "Shut it all down!"

Dummy shivered, then his head dropped limply.

"He's down, sir," Jarvis said sorrowfully.

Tony wrapped both arms around the silent bot. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

And finally, the rest of the Avengers stormed down the emergency stairs, back from wherever the distraction had led them.

"Holy fuck!" Clint yelped as he slid to a stop just inside the shattered glass doors, handgun out and sweeping the room.

"Oh my God!" Steve gasped.

Bruce said nothing as he looked around, then he swore under his breath and ran to Natasha, kicking a goon's body out of the way so he could help her to a stool.

"It was a distraction," she told them, allowing herself to wince as Bruce began treating her leg with the contents of the workshop first aid kit.

"We gathered," Clint said, still staring at the bodies.

Steve swallowed. "Jarvis said there was trouble back here. We got back."

Clint shook himself back to professionalism. "Is this all of them?"

Natasha shrugged. "All that came in here. Jarvis?"

"There are no other unauthorized personnel in the tower, Ms. Romanov. And these have been neutralized."

Clint reholstered his pistol and stooped to examine the nearest body. Steve stared at Tony. "What's wrong with him?" he asked Natasha grimly. "And why is there blood dripping off of Dummy?"

Bruce looked up, and Clint spun to look.

Tony hadn't responded to the others' arrival, still holding Dummy and whispering. Blood slowly pooled below Dummy's head as bits dripped off.

"Are those-blades?" Clint whispered. He looked at the body with the ripped out throat. "Oh my god. Tony's bots can kill?" His hand crept towards his holstered pistol as he looked suspiciously at Butterfingers, still in his charging station but looking confused and chirping quizzically.

"Stop it, Clint," Natasha snapped. "It didn't turn into Westworld in here. Tony had to give special orders."

"That is not helping, Tasha. It does nothing for my calm to know Tony Stark can order his robots to kill on his command." Clint glanced up at the ceiling, where most of the armor manipulation bots lurked.

"We'll deal with that later," Steve declared. He took a careful step towards Tony and Dummy. "Tony? Are you all right? What happened?"

Tony stopped whispering. "Hey, Cap. How was Staten Island?"

"We didn't get there. We turned back as soon as Jarvis got through to us. Tony, what happened?"

"We heard the call to assemble," Natasha said. "Jarvis didn't respond, we went for weapons, and this lot broke in." She nodded at the one with the spike in his skull. "That's the leader. He wanted details on a Stark/SHIELD project and thought Tony would be amenable to threats."

"And that always ends well," Clint muttered as he headed over to search the leader's body. He tapped the spike. "Where'd this come from?"

Natasha licked her lips. "Jarvis broke the lock they had on him, idiot there said they were on a deadline and that if they couldn't get the project details he'd be happy with the arc reactor. Dummy objected to the threat and got in the way. Things escalated, and Tony said he'd get Dummy under control. And he told Jarvis to initiate special orders."

Steve picked his way carefully to Tony's side. "What did Dummy do, Tony?"

He didn't look up. "Only what I told him to do." He kept petting the silent bot. "Nothing he could have done on his own."

Clint split his attention between the leader's body and the motionless Dummy. "Dude, why the hell is he able to do this at all?"

Tony sighed and settled back on his heels, one hand still on Dummy's arm. "After my parents died, it was-impressed upon me . . . how much danger I could be in, young and rich and stupid. Obadiah made a point of saying that it was stupid to spend so much time by myself in an isolated workshop with just a Tinker Toy for company. He kept talking about bodyguards." Tony bowed his head to rest it on Dummy's camera. "But I knew who I could trust. I knew who would never, ever desert me. So when no one was looking, I made sure he would be able to protect me. Nearly 30 years ago. I'd almost forgotten what I'd done to him. I wanted to forget, I was ashamed of it. But I never took it out." He absently scratched the joint behind the camera. "'Cause I know Dummy will look after me."

Steve cleared his throat carefully. "You can't leave him like that. You can't keep him when he knows how to kill.

"He won't know. I'm going to wipe his code, wipe him blank."

Bruce looked up from finishing bandaging Natasha's leg. "You're going to erase Dummy?"

Tony got up to find a spray bottle and cloth, then started cleaning Dummy's housing. "Jarvis, when was the last complete backup?"

"3 AM yesterday morning, sir. Incremental backup 11 PM last night."

"So he'll only lose a few hours. He won't remember today."

Bruce looked at Butterfingers. "Won't he remember?"

Tony closed his eyes. "I'll just erase a little bit of him, a few seconds. He'll know something messy happened, but he won't know Dummy did anything."

"Can't you do that with Dummy? Wiping everything-"

"Seeing is different from doing," Natasha said softly. They looked at her, in various degrees of thinking they understood. All except for Clint, whose jaw had gone tight, and Tony, who whispered to the unresponsive bot as he meticulously cleaned the machine.

Jarvis cleared his virtual throat. "This may not matter, sir, but you have said many times that if you were ever to wipe Dummy's code, you were going to fix-"

"Nothing different! Every misplaced one and zero and corrupt byte of code gets put back!"

"Very good, sir."

Steve straightened carefully. "And you're going to take those blades off?"

Tony didn't look up. "No. No physical modifications."

"You can't leave those on there. You modify him all the time."

"Look, I'm not going to go into that right now. I've got five bodies from a frighteningly efficient home invasion on my floor to deal with, said home invasion to figure out how they fuck they got in here, and traumatized bots to take care of! So not now!"

"Tony-"

"Steve," Natasha interrupted. "He's right, that can wait. We've got bodies to deal with and an investigation to start."

Bruce tapped her good leg. "And you to get a bullet out." She glared at him, and he smiled faintly.

Clint straightened with a set of keys and a small electronic device. "In case anyone's wondering, my report isn't going to say anything about the unexpected abilities of a bot known for extinguishing non-existent fires and making wretched smoothies." He studied Dummy. Tony was whispering over him again as he meticulously cleaned all the nooks and crannies. "Because we all know how the powers that be would react to that." He looked over at Steve and raised an eyebrow.

Steve frowned, then glanced at Natasha.

"It was a very unique set of circumstances," she said evenly. "Highly unlike to happen again."

Steve nodded. "Bruce?"

Bruce shrugged as he repacked the first aid kit. "I've always thought the bots could do some damage if they hit someone with any force behind them. We know they're strong, and no one should be surprised that they'd do their best to protest their creator. I didn't see anything to make me think differently."

Sighing, Steve nodded again. "I can only truthfully report on what I saw. But, Tony-you know this changes things. Knowing what Dummy can do-"

Tony shook his head hard. "Not what Dummy can do. What I can make him do. This is not his fault! He's just another poor victim of the Stark genius for bloodshed and-"

"Hey." Steve put a hand on his shoulder, silencing him. "It's OK."

Tony polished an already clean section. "He screamed when he saw what he'd done, Steve. Don't blame him."

Clint stepped through the smashed glass wall. "I'm going upstairs to call this in. We'll have visitors within 15 minutes, I imagine. You going to be in a place where you can function, Stark?"

"Yeah, I'll have my game face on."

Steve patted his shoulder. "Don't forget to take care of yourself." Tony nodded and shrugged the hand off his shoulder.

Bruce stood and offered a hand to Natasha. "Will you let SHIELD Medical fix your leg, or are you going to try to extract the bullet in your bathroom again?"

She narrowed her eyes at him, but he saw the smile she was hiding. "SHIELD Medical. In a few minutes." She looked at Tony, then back to Bruce.

He frowned, but nodded. "Only a few minutes."

"All right."

Bruce tapped Steve's arm, and the two crunched out through the shattered wall.

After a few moments, Tony sighed and leaned against Dummy. "When I turn around, there better not be anyone I didn't build in this room."

Natasha smiled. "Then you'd better not turn around just yet."

He grimaced. "Jarvis, can we retract the blades without giving him any awareness?"

"Yes, sir. The cognizance circuits are separate from the purely mechanical command paths."

"Do it. When he wakes back up, I don't want him seeing anything different." Dummy's head whirred and spun slightly as the blades folded away.

Natasha stood and carefully picked her way to a stool near Tony. "He doesn't know what the blades are for?"

He didn't look at her. "No. There's nothing in his internal code that knows what those capabilities are."

"The special orders."

"The special orders. I tell Jarvis to initiate them, Jarvis sends the codes to Dummy, Dummy is then able to use the extra bits I added in."

She watched him run his fingers over the housing that had hidden the blades. "Why haven't you removed the code? Why have you really left it in?"

"Honestly? I'd forget it was there. My brain was soaked in chemicals when I put it in. I was horrified when I found the code months later. I figured I'd pull it on the next upgrade, but whenever I get around to it, I never subtract, I just add."

"You're going to take it out now, though, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "I don't really need to bother, do I? I mean, he knows he has some extra bits he doesn't use, but he doesn't know why, and he won't remember. And, really, it's a great ace in the hole. It saved our butts here, gave us the edge. After all, he's just a robot, he doesn't feel anything I haven't told him to feel, he's just a machine, he's not a real-" His voice choked off, and he leaned again the motionless arm.

Very carefully, she rested her fingers on his shoulders. "Take them out. Then you'll never need to ask him to do this sort of thing again."

"I shouldn't have done it this time."

"We were outgunned by people who knew our abilities and planned for them. It would have been a bloodbath when Clint and the others showed up. You broke the stalemate with the tools you had to hand. You wouldn't have done it if you had seen another way."

Tony finally sighed and straightened. "How does Coulson do it, telling you or Clint to take the shot on somebody?"

She smiled. "Our targets generally deserve it, and Clint and I are a little tougher than Dummy." She petted Dummy's arm. "He's not meant for things like this." She paused, but Tony didn't make the obvious remark about how she and Clint were meant for this work. "I'm glad Steve was able to see things the right way. He's obviously read too many stories about robots turning on their masters."

"Oh, the masters never believe their creations will ever throw off their chains." He got to his feet and went to one of his terminals. "Jarvis, show me his backups. Do an integrity scan, then make four good copies."

"Yes, sir. It would be a simple matter to remove the special orders from the backups. The code could be stored separately."

Tony's lips curled. "Don't trust me not to pull something like this again?"  
"I and the others trust you implicitly, sir." Jarvis sounded almost offended. "And I would remind you that you never explicitly programmed trust into our code. It seems to have developed on its own." His tone softened. "But I would spare Dummy the experience and you the decision in the future."

"I know I should," Tony whispered, his eyes closed. "But he's his own being now. Pulling stuff out-I feel like I'm rewriting his soul."

Natasha gave him a cold smile. "If you didn't want to play God, Stark, you would have written programs that only said Yes, Sir and knew how to follow a smoothie recipe."

But he didn't laugh. "No, I went the full operatic, megalomaniacal, lightning rods on the roof mad scientist route. I gave my bots a way to feel the emotions I wanted them to feel, to act the way I wanted them to act, and I taught them how to kill." He shot her a brief glance, then looked away. "I'd have done well in the Red Room."

She winced at the loathing in his voice. "No. No, Tony, you are not like them."

"No? They played with your memories. I'm going to erase Dummy and put in something else I like better."

Natasha pulled him around to face her. "You are putting himself back in, but without the terrible memories. You are sparing him that pain. But this is not why you are not like them." She stroked the new tears from his cheeks. "My masters never wept."

He barely met her eyes, but he wrapped his hands around her arms. "Jarvis."

"Yes, sir."

"Pull the code. And erase it. Don't save any copies."

"Done, sir."

He sighed deeply. "And yet another act of God to Tony Stark's name. One of these days he's going to get too comfortable doing that."  
She patted his cheek. "Not with his attendant angels to keep an eye on him. And in all the best stories, the deity is a benevolent God."

"Yeah. We'll see how well that works out." He looked down, then raised his head to look her full in the face. "And I seem to remember that you promised Bruce you'd get to Medical in just a few minutes. Jarvis, has our invasion from SHIELD gotten here yet?"

"The helicopter arrived 72 seconds ago, sir."

With as much grace as she could manage, Natasha took his arm for balance towards the shattered walls. The elevator at the end of the hall opened to disgorge Clint, Steve, Coulson, and a team of assorted suits.

"Can we throw him a waking up party?" she asked before the horde was in earshot.

Most of the despair cracked and drained out of Tony's eyes. "He likes parties. I'll get him a new fire extinguisher."

"I'm picking out his hat."

"Deal."


End file.
